Pop It Up

Pop It Up is a pink yellow and rather friendly public installation created by Anya Sirota + AKOAKI , a Michigan-based design studio. The giant three-dimensional stars have been erected in an old tannery in Amilly, France, as floating signifiers, designed to deliver iconographic ‘pow’.

Using simple portable wood working tools and a simple American vernacular stud construction, Pop It Up is anything but glitzy. The construction process, staged as a performance, was open to the public and is commissioned by the city of Amilly at a critical time for the tannery complex, since the site will be converted into a cultural art center in fall 2013. The surviving architecture, with it’s current state of coming-undone-ness and bared concrete structure, offers exceptional opportunities for experimentation and interim engagement. The stars encourage visitors to take a fresh look at the spatial potentials of an industrial site in the process of transformation and to imagine a more playful, dynamic and collective future.